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Florida BobcatsThe Florida Bobcats were an Arena Football League team from 1996 to 2001. When the Miami Hooters team discontinued its connection with the Hooters Restaurant chain after the 1995 season was completed, it developed both a new identity (the Bobcats) and a new color scheme involving teal and black as opposed to the former orange and brown associated with the restaurants. It also moved north to West Palm Beach in an attempt to reduce overhead. This proved to be a mixed blessing at best, however, as the relatively tiny seating capacity of the West Palm Beach Auditorium (ca. 4000) made profitable operations essentially impossible. In the 1997 and 1998 seasons the team played a total of five official league games (and several exhibition games as well) at what were charitably called "neutral sites", lesser venues in what were at best secondary markets, where, however, even a less-than-capacity crowd could result in greater revenues from ticket sales than would a home game sellout -- were there to be one. This development led to them being referred to by some of the league's pundits as "America's Team", a not-unironic comparison to what was then the National Football League's premier organization, the Dallas Cowboys. This situation was used to an advantage by the league to determine support for the sport in parts of the country where it had previously had little exposure, and should be credited at least in part for the development of the sport's minor league, af2. In 1999 the Bobcats moved into the far more spacious confines of the National Car Rental Center, now the Office Depot Center, also home to the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League. They remained there until the team was folded after the completion of the 2001 season. One of the notable items about this team is that they were quarterbacked through the majority of their existence by Fred McNair, the original "Air McNair" and older brother of 2003 NFL co-MVP Steve McNair.
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